The feast of the Most Holy Trinity celebrates one of our most ancient beliefs. But we don’t celebrate a dogma or official church teaching today. Nor will we try to “explain” the teaching in our preaching this weekend (cf. Quotable below). Instead, we celebrate and reflect on our relationship with God and what our Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier has done for us. The scriptures remind us of our God’s graciousness and we rejoice in the God who has acted so mightily and lovingly on our behalf.
Let’s focus on the second reading today because the selection from Romans speaks of the Trinity in very basic terms. (It is always a challenge for the preacher to preach from Paul and today gives us a good opportunity. So, why not give it a try?) Paul articulates the work of the Trinity. God, our Creator, gives peace to us who have faith, even amid our suffering and pours out love and sustains our hope until one day we share in God’s fullness. This peace comes to us through Christ, who is God’s shalom, and in Christ we have constant assurance of grace. The Spirit, Paul tells us, provides the means by which we experience God’s love for us.
The Romans passage today begins with, “Therefore.” Therefore what? Paul is drawing a conclusion from what he has been writing up to this point. He began Romans by stating his theme (1:16-17): the relationship between Judaism and Christianity and the power of the gospel to save believers, “…the Jew first, then the Greek. For in the gospel is revealed the justice of God, which begins and ends with faith.” The central issue, Paul says, is a faith, that through Jesus Christ, is now available to Jew and Gentile. Paul begins this section of Romans with “therefore” because he is going to elaborate on the consequences of being justified by faith. He is speaking to Christians (“we”) and will show how our faith in God’s love and the work God has done for us in Christ will ground us in hope for the future, despite the present sufferings we endure for our beliefs.
What do we have, we who are “justified by faith?” The first consequence is peace. We believe we are in good relationship with God, not because of anything we have done, but because of what God has done for us in Christ. This grace didn’t just come once, but we have “access” to it continually. Paul helps us celebrate this feast by stirring up in us a festive mood. Because of God’s work in justifying us, we can, by the gift of faith, be assured that we are at peace with God. We may not always feel or think we are, but we place our faith in Christ.
We are assured by the Holy Spirit that we enjoy divine favor and access into God’s presence. It is as if we entered a castle and instead of being treated as outsiders, were immediately ushered into the royal presence as honored guests. Paul says we “stand” in grace. Reflect on that for a while: we have access to God continually because of our new status, we are standing in grace. No matter what our past, how unworthy we feel, or whether we deserve it or not, we can confidently stand before God because we have faith in Jesus.
Paul goes on to say that because of our standing in grace before God, we have hope that we will share in God’s glory; that we will be fully restored from all the damage sin has done to us and one day stand before God as we were created— in God’s image and likeness. Meanwhile, in our daily struggles and as we face temptations against our very Christian identity, it doesn’t always feel like we are “standing in grace.” That’s where faith comes in; it reassures us of God’s constant forgiveness and active love and keeps the hope alive that one day God’s work will be culminated, when the “glory of God” is shown in us.
All this may sound “other worldly,” or “pie in the sky,” except for what Paul says next. He acknowledges the “afflictions” Christians experience in this age. Taken on its own, the second half of the reading can sound like a spiritual fitness exercise: when we have suffering and endured we will develop a “proven character.” But remember what Paul has been saying: it is grace and the faith it stirs up, that enable the Christian to endure afflictions and sufferings that threaten our beliefs. During these difficult times, God works overtime on our behalf to help us grow in hope and in the assurance of God’s love.
In the very moment of suffering we can “boast.” Why? Because we are such strong and exemplary Christians able to bear up under severe testing? Able to overcome trials of all sorts that test our faith? No. We can “boast” because God stands with us and can turn even our trials into opportunities for our spiritual benefit. Only God can do this; only the free gift of grace in which we stand can make this possible. We may not see what the end will yield, but our hope reassures us, we are and will be in safe hands. The voice of the Holy Spirit in us reminds us amid our sufferings that God’s love will never abandon us, no matter how frail or unworthy of that love we feel. We are justified, made right with God, through faith.
For Paul, faith is the basis of our Christian lives. He reminds us at the beginning of Romans that to believe is to accept God’s power into our lives (1: 16-17; 3:24). As a result of this acceptance we have a whole new life and intimacy with God through Jesus. Based on this faith, we live a new life in obedience to God. Faith begins with God’s free offer of an intimate relathionship with us and we respond by living a life of good works, even under duress and suffering.
We are united with a community that professes, as we do, faith in Jesus Christ. The members of this community, with the support of one another, seek to practice this faith in daily life and in our worship today. Gathered in prayer and praise we celebrate those who have handed on faith to us, our ancestors. We also rely on those who are with us today, whose faith deepens and sustains our own. The community is the sign to us of God’s grace and love and so stirs up our hope and assurance that God’s love will never abandon us. Who among us hasn’t been through trials that have shaken us to our foundation and seemed like they would extinguish our faith? Yet, in the midst of the dark night we have found hope through other members of the community who, by their presence, phone calls, notes and spontaneous and loving outreach, have strengthened our flagging spirits.
At these moments we have known what Paul means when he describes the “love of God,” that “has been poured out into our hearts.” That love has taken flesh for us in others, as it took flesh in Jesus Christ and, through the work of the Holy Spirit, we have the eyes of faith and have come to believe that we are the beneficiaries of a gracious God’s care. Faith has helped us see what we might otherwise have missed—“the grace in which we stand.”
In this very brief passage Paul encourages faith in our triune God by helping us see God’s activities on our behalf. We learn about our triune God, not so much from dogma and doctrine, but by what God’s actions have revealed. The teachings and statements of faith will follow as the community reflects on what it has learned from its encounters with its God. Romans reaffirms what our Jewish ancestors came to believe: God can be trusted: to stand with us in times of need; to forgive us when we have sinned and to nourish our hope in times of pain and trial, by promising us a secure future, “…we boast in hope of the glory of God.” What “proof” do we have that our hope is not groundless or wishful thinking? God has “through the Holy Spirit” sustained us and made God’s love known to us in our hearts.
Both within our community and beyond we are called to be evangelizers who, through our words and actions, give witness to our gracious God whose love “has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given us.” We are called to share with others what we have personally come to know. Today we celebrate the Most Holy Trinity. One way to do that is to celebrate the life of that Trinity in each believer and to respond with confidence to the call to proclaim our loving God to all the world. We pray at this Eucharist that the Holy Spirit will show each of how to do that so that our church will better mirror the God we profess today.
TRINITY – MYSTERY OF GOODNESS
Throughout the centuries, theologians have tried to investigate the mystery of God by deepening their concept of God’s nature and by expressing their conclusions in different languages. But all too often our words hide God’s mystery more than reveal it. Jesus doesn’t talk much about God. He simply offers us his experience.
Jesus calls God ‘Father’ and he experiences God as a mystery of goodness. He lives this mystery as a good Presence that blesses our life and draws us, God’s sons and daughters, to fight against anything that destroys humanity. For Jesus, this ultimate mystery of reality that we believers call ‘God’ is a close and loving Presence that is opening a path in the world in order to construct, with us and beside us, a more human life.
Jesus never separates this Father from the Father’s project of transforming the world. He isn’t able to think of God as someone enclosed in an unfathomable mystery, with back turned on the suffering of God’s sons and daughters. That’s why he asks his followers to open themselves to the mystery of this God, to believe in the Good News of God’s project, to unite ourselves to God in order to work for a more just and happy world for everyone, and to seek always that God’s justice, God’s truth, God’s peace reign more and more among us.
Furthermore, Jesus experiences himself as ‘Son’ of this God, born to promote here on earth the humanizing project of the Father and to bring it to definitive fullness, above all even in death. That is why he seeks at all times what the Father wants. His faithfulness to God leads him to seek always the good of God’s sons and daughters. His passion for God translates itself into compassion for all who suffer.
Therefore Jesus’ whole existence as Son of God consists in bringing healing to life and alleviating suffering, defending victims and demanding justice for them, sowing deeds of goodness and offering everyone the free mercy and forgiveness of God: the salvation that comes from the Father.
Lastly, Jesus acts at all times driven by the ‘Spirit’ of God. This is the Father’s love that sends him to announce to the poor the Good News of God’s saving project. This is the breath of God that moves him to bring healing to life. This is his saving power that manifests itself in every prophetic path.
This Spirit won’t be extinguished in our world when Jesus is gone. He himself promised this to his disciples. The power of the Spirit will make them witnesses of Jesus the Son of God, and co-workers in the saving project of the Father. This is the concrete way we Christians live out the mystery of the Trinity